


The Unquiet Grave

by Ophelia Coelridge (daemonluna)



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-16
Updated: 2001-06-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:33:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemonluna/pseuds/Ophelia%20Coelridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy says goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unquiet Grave

**Author's Note:**

> _"The folklore theme ... is that too much mourning disturbs the dead. The tears of the mourner wet the shroud, drown the corpse, or make heavy work for dead children who must carry the water away in buckets. Thus the dead lover returns as a ‘revenant’ to plead for the cessation of mourning."  
>  \--Medieval English Literature, ed. Thomas Garbaty _

Billy hadn’t wanted to play Edmonton ever again, for fuck’s sake. Hadn’t wanted to tour. But this was Jenifur, this was drivers and high-class hotels, not twenty hours behind the wheel in a piece of shit van, bad coffee, and band houses.

Ed had insisted. And Billy had shrugged, and gone. In the end, what did it really matter, anyhow? Sure, he wasn't the wide-eyed kid that he'd been when he's first met good ol' Ed Festus. But Ed was persistent if nothing else, and he knew how to wheedle and charm. Arguing just... wasn't worth the energy. Not much was these days. Just do the gig, play the right notes, smile pretty, and pick up the pay cheque. That's what it was all about.

So what if Edmonton was the place where Joe had finally ended it all and put a bullet through his useless skull? In the end it was just another midsize Canadian prairie city with not much at all to distinguish it from playing Winnipeg or Calgary or even Lethbridge if all you saw of it was the hotel room, the dressing rooms, and the stage. He sure as hell wasn’t planning on going site-seeing.

But he’d still slipped out of the hotel an hour earlier. "Gotta go visit an old friend," he’d told the rest of the band non-commitally.

Even then, he still wasn’t going to go. Wasn’t going to do it. Even when he found himself standing in a florist’s shop out of some misplaced sense of propriety, mindlessly agreeing with the sales clerk that yes, the daisies were lovely, he’d take a dozen. He could turn around and go back any time. In fact, he was going to. Right after he went one block closer. Just to prove he could, not because he was actually going to go or anything.

So he told himself. Which didn’t explain how he ended up standing in the middle of Mount Pleasant Cemetery staring at the headstone of one Joseph Mulgrew.

"Hey," Billy said self-consciously. "Didn’t think I’d come, did you?" He fidgeted nervously, shooting a furtive glance over his shoulder. Nothing. Nothing but solemn pines, birch trees, and stately row after row of tombstones punctuated by heaps of wilted bright flowers.

"But I did. I came anyhow." The sun was high overhead, bright enough that it made him squint and wish for his sunglasses, forgotten back at the hotel.

"I wasn’t going to."

He could hear the drone of traffic from the street below, the higher-pitched hum of the insects in the brittle grass around him. The sun was fierce and hot.

"Just like I didn’t come to the funeral. ‘cause I didn’t. But you know that, you, uh, were there." He rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously

It had been a bitterly cold, relentlessly grey morning two days after their last gig when they lowered Joe down under the frozen earth. And Billy had spent it in the International Airport, waiting to fly back to L.A. on standby.

He should have gone to the funeral. He should have done a lot of things. But he didn't.

Billy scuffed one foot against the dusty ground. "Nice place you got here." It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the bare earth was starting to show through the patchy, yellowing grass.

"I know we both pulled some nasty shit over the years, Joe, but this, after this... it’s just not something I’m ever gonna be able to let go. But you knew that, didn’t you?"

He knelt down stiffly on the dry grass and put the wilting bouquet on the parched earth in front of the headstone.

"Y’know," he said conversationally to Joe’s grave, "I never did cry for you. Not a single fucking tear. Not one."

He turned to leave. Thought better of it. Turned back.

Kicked the headstone in one fluid, vicious movement.

"I’ll never forgive you, you fucker," he hissed. And limped out of the empty cemetery. He never looked back.


End file.
